When I first heard about our 80 percent voter turnout moonshot goal, the political scientist in me raised her eyebrows. I had only been with Democracy Works for a couple of months and my deep-rooted belief in our mission was just a seedling.

This skeptical reaction was, and remains, a common one, but we chose 80 percent precisely because it is such a bold goal. It has been a little over a year since that goal was established. I can now see a clear path to achieving that goal, and I’m not alone. In one year, more than 50 corporations and nonprofit organizations have signed on to the TurboVote Challenge, a community that brings corporate and nonprofit leaders together to increase U.S. voter turnout.

While Challenge members are active in voter engagement year round, one of the most critical pieces of the work has been our annual symposium. In the summers of July 2016 and June 2017, Democracy Works and Challenge members gathered in person for a voter engagement summit to learn from one another and plan for the future. There are three major takeaways that I’d like to share from our most recent convening, graciously hosted by the Democracy Fund and sponsored by Facebook and Starbucks.

First, anyone working on long-term plans to influence voter engagement should start that work early. There’s a tendency in some sectors, including corporate America, to create a new voter engagement campaign from scratch mere weeks before an election, and even then, usually only in presidential election years. If we’re going to dramatically increase turnout, we can’t start from zero every two or four years.

Second, there’s a lot of knowledge in the voter engagement space, but the one thing we know for sure is that there’s still much to learn. Anyone looking to make a difference can have an effect by doing a few things: starting small, intentionally iterating to find what works, and sharing their experiences with others in this community. In fact, sharing best practices is precisely how we build a broader understanding of what works and what doesn’t — we learn as we go.

The third takeaway came from Austin Belali of the Youth Engagement Fund, who discussed how every generation has stretched the “We” in “We the People.” Gaining voting rights over time — expanding the right to non-land owners, non-whites, and women — has been a long, hard-fought journey. The TurboVote Challenge is an opportunity to contribute to the growth of the “We” in our time. “We” are making history.

Expanding the “We” via the TurboVote Challenge is no simple feat: one size does not fit all when implementing a project of this depth and breadth. The Challenge members have diverse resources and constraints. In order to succeed in our moonshot goal while respecting the diversity of organizations involved, Democracy Works creates a unifying message with guide rails, while also allowing for a wide range of campaign implementations. Our partners have done a tremendous job of sussing out what works for them and their audiences.

Even with all the adaptation and learning along the way, one thing remains constant and has become a bit of a manifesto in the Challenge: we have to increase engagement in every election, every year. From the very beginning, we have focused on increasing turnout in federal elections, but also in state, local, and municipal elections. Increasing participation across the board is crucial considering we have seen turnout at the local level sink as low as 8 percent. Simply calling the problem a crisis is, arguably, an understatement.

The real outcomes in 2016 exceeded our expectations by leaps and bounds. Assuming a market rate of ten dollars per voter registration, TurboVote Challenge partners generated $23 million in voter registration value. They accomplished this in a variety of ways, from ad targeting to social media, and from Starbucks cup sleeves to broadcast calls to action.

Now, on to the next phase. The TurboVote Challenge will refine its approach in 2017 with a goal of increasing voter turnout by 5 percentage points in the 2018 midterms (over the 2014 midterms). If we achieve that goal, we’re well on our way to achieving the moonshot described at the start: 80 percent voter turnout.

In nearly every state, some data fields on the voter registration list are public record and available for purchase; typically, this includes name, address, year of birth, vote history, and party identification where applicable. Many voters are only just becoming aware that this is the case thanks to the recent request by the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity for publicly available voter data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The Denver Post reported that, as of July 13, just under 3,400 Colorado voters canceled their voter registrations, a very small fraction of the state’s nearly 3.7 million total registered voters. Other states have not reported an increase in registration cancellations.

671 of Colorado’s cancellations came from from the City and County of Denver between July 3 and July 14; in the previous two weeks, just 20 voters canceled their voter registration. The July cancellations still represent just 0.15 percent of Denver’s total active and inactive registered voter population. 62 percent of those canceling their registrations from June 19 to July 14 are registered Democrats, despite only 48 percent Democrat registration in Denver overall. Unaffiliated voters, who make up 36 percent of Denver’s registered voter population, are 32 percent of those who have canceled their registrations. Republicans comprise 14 percent of registered voters and four percent of those who have canceled their registrations.

In neighboring Arapahoe County, 544 registered voters have canceled their registrations as of July 19, representing just 0.13 percent of Arapahoe’s registered voters. Similar to Denver, Democrats make up 33 percent of Arapahoe’s registered voter population while they comprise 54 percent of those who have withdrawn their voter registration record. Unaffiliated registrants comprise 38 percent of canceled voter registrations and 37 percent of the registered voter population, and Republicans make up 28 percent of registered voters and just 7 percent of those who have canceled their voter registrations.

Arapahoe also provided more detailed demographic data. Those who have canceled their voter registration are somewhat more female than the registered voter population—61 percent vs. 52 percent—as well as slightly older than Arapahoe’s registered voter population overall.

Given the challenges of getting voters on the rolls in the first place, seeing voters cancel their registrations is concerning. Fortunately, Colorado’s sweeping Voter Access and Modernized Elections Act of 2013 implemented in-person Election Day registration, among many other reforms, so these voters will still be able to cast a ballot at a Voter Service and Polling Center even if they forget to re-register in advance of their next election.

*As of July 21, Denver reports more than 850 cancellations (0.19 percent of total registered voters) and Arapahoe reports 576 cancellations (0.14 percent of total registered voters).

On June 29, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) issued its report on the 2016 Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS). EAVS, mandated by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), compiles data on federal elections from every state, ranging from registration and turnout to voting equipment and more. There are challenges to this kind of data collection, both in terms of getting responses to every question from every state—in many states, elections are administered at the county or even town-level—and ensuring that each state reports the same data in response to the same question, ensuring an even comparison. Despite these challenges, the EAVS survey remains the only comprehensive accounting of how the states administer a given federal election and tells us a lot about what happened from the administrative side during the general election.

There are thousands of data points to choose from in the 2016 report, but a few really stand out:

States report a total of 214,109,360 total registered voters, a 10.6 percent increase from 2012. 2016 marks the first time the U.S. has reported more than 200,000,000 registered voters.

Of the more than 77 million voter registration transactions (new registrations or updates to an existing registration) between 2014 and 2016, 37.3 percent were new, valid registrations. A plurality of the other transactions (39.7 percent) were in-state updates (changes of address, party, or name). 10.3 percent of the applications received were duplicate registrations or otherwise invalid.

2016 saw a record number of citizens using online voter registration. 17.4 percent, or approximately 13.5 million, of voter registration transactions were online, up from 6.5 percent of voter registration transactions in 2014 and 5.3 percent of transactions in 2012. We saw a slight decrease in voter registration transactions at motor vehicle departments during the same time period, with 32.7 percent of total registration transactions, or approximately 25.3 million voter registration transactions, down from approximately 35 percent in 2012.

41.3 percent of ballots cast in the November 2016 election were cast before Election Day. Of total turnout of more than 140 million, 17.2 percent of ballots were cast at early in-person voting locations and 23.7 percent were cast via absentee by mail. Seven states—Arizona, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, Nevada, Oregon, and Texas—saw more than 60 percent of their total ballots cast before Election Day.

More than 70 percent of the 2,460,421 provisional ballots cast on Election Day were counted, either in full or in part (state law varies about how many races on a provisional ballot are counted based on where the ballot is cast in relation to where the ballot was supposed to be cast).

The EAC provides election administrators and others in the field with valuable information and the 2016 EAVS is certainly no exception.

Summer is finally here! Instead of taking a break, our team has been busy creating serious feature updates.

What’s new?

At the beginning of the year, we released a new admin dashboard to give you a snapshot of your voter engagement data. Snapshots provide great insights, but what if you need to filter for a particular date range to quickly measure the success of specific campaigns? You can now narrow down your stats with a handy date filter:

Have you ever wanted users to opt into additional communications from your organization, or sign up to volunteer as they register for TurboVote? You can now do that with our customizable check box!

Some election clerks ask for very specific formatting on students’ voter registration forms, and students often ask us if they can register using their residence hall address. To bridge this gap, we’ve developed a tool to help. Students who wish to register to vote using an on-campus address are now able to select their housing option from a dropdown menu and the address will populate automatically. This will lead to fewer mistakes, smoother processing at the election clerk’s office, and more successfully-registered student voters! Let us know if your campus would like to take advantage of this tool.

If you're a current TurboVote partner and would like more information about these new features, contact partnerships@turbovote.org.

So, what’s next?More usability testing! With our summer associates available to help, we hope to conduct several new site tests with partners in the New York City area. Please let us know if your organization is interested in holding a usability test! Usability testing is a simple 15-minute walkthrough of our product with users. Typically, during a test, participants will complete the TurboVote signup process while we watch, listen, and take notes.

As always, a huge thanks to our engineering and research teams for helping us serve hundreds of thousands of voters with election reminders, advising them of the local elections happening across the country this year.

Students from across the country are attracted to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. It is challenging to serve the voter engagement needs of Georgetown students given that they are from so many different states. TurboVote is particularly useful, as it helps students register to vote whether they chose to be D.C. voters or vote in their home state.

Undergraduate and graduate students from GU Votes take the lead implementing TurboVote at Georgetown. GU Votes is a student-led initiative that emerged from Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service (GU Politics) to expand civic awareness, increase voter registration levels among Georgetown students, and institutionalize civic engagement efforts on campus. In advance of the 2016 election, student leaders initially set a goal to register 1000 Georgetown students to vote with the campaign #1000GUVotes. In September, GU Votes surpassed their goal and set a new goal of #1500GUVotes. Ultimately, nearly 1,600 Georgetown students signed up for TurboVote in 2016!

GU Votes executed a strategy that involved collaborating with organizations and offices across campus to reach nearly ten percent of the Georgetown student body. To recruit volunteers, GU Votes student leaders attended the GU Politics ice cream social at the beginning of the fall semester to connect with students interested in political engagement. GU Votes utilized the GU Politics newsletter and social media to recruit additional volunteers. Due to their collaborative relationship with GU Politics, GU Votes had the opportunity to post on social media frequently about getting involved with their initiative. The hard work paid off when one week after the ice cream social, over 30 students attended a TurboVote training session.

GU Votes tapped into their volunteer base as frequently as possible. They made sure to set up tables with laptops at a number of GU Politics events, including debate watch parties attended by hundreds of students. GU Votes worked with over 20 student organizations and not only made announcements at their meetings but tabled to sign students up for TurboVote at other organizations’ events.

One of GU Votes’s most successful events was Storm the Dorm. In late September, volunteers tabled at five campus residence halls and the library. According to GU Votes co-founder and Undergraduate Outreach Co-Chair Bethan Saunders, tabling with laptops at residence hall entrances proved to be more successful and efficient than going door-to-door registering voters on paper. GU Votes volunteers had multiple chances to catch students as they would come in and out of buildings.

TurboVote is busy at work covering local elections nationwide this year. Hundreds of thousands of election messages will go out to TurboVote users so they’re ready to take part. But informing voters about their elections is just the first step to helping them vote; because simply knowing that an election is happening isn’t enough. The voting process can be confusing, complex, and sometimes difficult. That’s why we’re studying exactly what support voters need to register and cast their votes with confidence. First-time voters have different needs from experienced voters, and people live complex lives with changing ZIP codes and names, all of which affect their ability to vote with ease.

We set out to interview voters to identify their voting struggles with the goal of gathering the kind of information TurboVote should be providing users in the future. Our methodology? A mix of in-person user studies in California, New York, and Pennsylvania, as well as post-election user surveys in Texas. In total, we interviewed 21 users and received 146 survey responses.

How did we do it? We started with a few questions about the last election in which our users voted. We asked them to identify any problems, struggles, or memorable confusion about the process. Here is what we learned:

Our friends and family help us get started. Several participants mentioned a family member who helped them navigate the voting process, like parents who helped them register for the first time or siblings who helped them figure out who to vote for.

“I talked to my dad and my sister to get the information I needed to vote for the first time. My dad helped me on the paperwork and my sister helped me figure out who to vote for.” - participant from California study

We have complex address stories. Participants reported they live in one area, have an ID from another area, and prefer to vote in yet another area. Many interviewees were not aware they needed to re-register every time they moved, if they plan to vote in the new location.

“I live on campus, but I prefer to vote from my home district.” - participant from New York study

“I was registered in Orange, not Marin [county]. When I went to the polls, I filled out a provisional ballot but the poll worker called me to tell me that my vote did not count.” - participant from California study

Voting by mail is confusing. Most of the interviewees did not understand the absentee voting process. Most believed they had no option but to make it to the polls on Election Day.

“I didn’t vote in the last election because I was busy working. I always miss elections because I am frequently away for business and can’t show up to the polls.” - participant from Pennsylvania study

We struggle with the logistical side of voting. Most participants had trouble identifying their options for voting as well as describing registration rules or voter ID laws. They rarely knew their polling locations. Additionally, no participant had a single source of election information; they relied on a number of outlets, including friends and family, Google search, or an institution they trust.

“We should be allowed to vote wherever we happen to be. Having to vote at our precinct makes it difficult for those of us that can't plan ahead.” - participant from Texas survey

We want to see the ballot ahead of the big day. Participants who voted in the past were always surprised to see unfamiliar names on the ballot. In the future, they wanted to see the actual ballot ahead of Election Day.

“Last November, I didn’t know how to vote in the alternate categories - I didn’t even know what the other categories were. I think I voted for senators.” - participant from California study

Next, we asked participants to identify how TurboVote could help eliminate the anxiety and confusion they described in the first part of the interview.

Let’s suppose you have an upcoming election. TurboVote is committed to sending you all of the information you need to make you feel prepared to vote. What kind of information would you need? Select from the list below:

Add election to your personal calendar with one click

Registration deadline

Absentee ballot request form deadline

Sample ballot

Polling place location and hours

Election results

Participants found all of the proposed notifications to be useful. By far, polling location hours and access to a sample ballot were ranked as the most important information for voters. Voters want to see the actual ballot ahead of Election Day, which suggests a high level of anxiety – voters are intimidated by the ballot itself.

When asked to suggest any other reminders that would help them vote, users suggested we offer more information about options to vote early, like adding early voting deadlines with text and email reminders.

What’s next? This is a great start to our research, but we need more data. We plan to continue our user studies throughout the summer, and welcome any organization that would like to collaborate with us on this project. If you are interested in assisting with our user testing, please contact us at info@turbovote.org.

Of course, we had our personal favorite comments among the feedback...

With over 85,000 credit students and 6 campuses, LSC is the largest higher education institution in the Houston area. Since the two furthest campuses are approximately one hour apart, TurboVote is a practical solution for engaging students across distant campuses. One in four local Houston area high school students choose to attend LSC, making the institution deeply tied to the community it serves.

Dr. Jay Theis, the Director of the Center for Civic Engagement at Lone Star College, collaborated with campus IT staff to place a banner on LSC’s online campus portal iStar. The portal, which uses Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Campus Solutions, supports integral student services such as class registration. With such regular high traffic, the call-to-action banner for voter registration resulted in over 1,000 TurboVote signups in the first week of its implementation.

Lone Star fostered faculty and community involvement in their voter engagement initiatives. Dr. Theis sent an email to faculty to encourage them to let their students know that TurboVote is a resource available to them. With multiple entryways to TurboVote, students are more likely to sign up. Additionally, LSC was one of seven community colleges in The Democracy Commitment that was chosen to host a “Citizenship Under Siege” public forum sponsored by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant. The forum included speakers and a deliberative dialogue. LSC students, faculty, and staff participated, in addition to community members.

Students were involved in every step of the process. The Engage the Election initiative focused on getting students registered to vote and providing them with opportunities to become informed voters. Dr. Theis worked with civic engagement campus coordinators at each LSC campus to ensure programming, events, and resources were available to all students. Over the course of the 2016 election season, the Center for Civic Engagement sponsored 18 candidate forums. Student volunteers handed out business cards printed with the LSC TurboVote link at each forum. They also attended other campus events to distribute the cards, even if those events were unrelated to the election.

Importantly, LSC brought voter registration and voter education resources together. The Engage the Election webpage included links to TurboVote and explained the services that TurboVote provides. Additionally, links were provided to the Texas Secretary of State’s offices and county clerks for the 4 counties that have LSC campuses. Students could learn more about participating in Volunteer Deputy Voter Registrar trainings held on LSC campuses. Resources such as GovTrack and Politifact were shared on the page in order for students to learn more about elected officials and candidates. Effectively registering student voters is only one component in supporting civic learning and democratic engagement on campus.

It is important to consider how you can provide resources to students that help them learn about electoral processes and access reliable candidate information, too. Check out our Voter Engagement Toolkit to learn about the many excellent youth civic engagement resources available!

Our summer associates are finally here! We’re so glad to have with us five driven students eager to make voting an easy, natural part of young people’s lives. They’ve already been working nonstop on a wide variety of projects to aid TurboVote implementation and development on your campus. Though they come to us from schools across the country, including Duke University, the University of Chicago, Texas State University, Harvard University, and the University of Kansas, their shared passion for civic engagement and innovation has drawn them to the Democracy Works team in Brooklyn. We’ve asked our associates to share more about themselves below, so you can get to know who they are!

The 2017 TurboVote Summer Associates, from left to right: Eloise, Prince, Michelle, Alex, and Brian.

Eloise KaehnyEloise is a rising junior at Harvard University, where she is majoring in social studies with a focus on environmental justice and Spanish language. On campus, she is a member of both a Harvard campaign committee and the Institute of Politics National Campaign civic engagement group (NAC). Eloise's excitement towards useful civic innovation and improved political engagement brought her to Democracy Works. She enjoys watching Cambridge sunsets and finding local concerts in her free time, and is grateful to be back in her native New York for the summer.

Alex MurrayAlex is a rising sophomore at the University of Kansas, where he is majoring in finance with a minor in environmental science. He works at the Dole Institute of Politics, serves on his school’s finance committee, and participates in a sustainability organization he founded in 2016. Alex’s interest in increasing civic engagement and modernizing voting process lead him to Democracy Works and the TurboVote Summer Associate team. When he escapes from the big city, Alex can be found doing photography, making music, or camping - preferably, combining all three.

Brian ParkBrian is a rising junior at Duke University, where he is pursuing a degree in political science and a minor in computer science. He has previously worked on a campaign in North Carolina and is an active brother of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. After learning more about the state of American democracy and its fundamental problems, Brian decided to spend his summer at Democracy Works to contribute to a solution. In his free time, Brian enjoys playing soccer (his favorite team is Real Madrid) and watching food documentaries on Netflix.

Michelle ShimMichelle Shim is currently a rising second year at the University of Chicago, where she is pursuing a double major in economics and political science. At college, Michelle is involved in the Fellows Program at the Institute of Politics, competes on the moot court team, and is a research assistant for the Midwestern Longitudinal Study of Asian American Families. Her passion for socioeconomic issues and public policy research led her to the TurboVote team this summer. She has attended 13 different schools in the U.K., South Korea, New Jersey, California, and Georgia, and is constantly baking, nibbling on supposedly healthy dark chocolate, and reading the works of Jane Austen.

Prince WinbushPrince Winbush is a rising sophomore at Texas State University, where he is pursuing a degree in mass communications with a concentration in public relations and two minors in political communication and music management. Prince recently finished his stint at Lone Star College, where he was president of a Lone Star political club and Vice President of the Gender and Sexuality Alliance. Prince is a native of Cardiff, Wales, but spent his teenage years in Chicago and now calls Texas home. He serves on his local party county committee as well as on the Texas state party board. In his free time, you can find Prince at a concert, searching the web for new artists, or scoping out the latest stories coming out of D.C. or his state capitol, Austin, T.X.

All of us at Democracy Works are looking forward to a full summer with this great group! If you're interested in applying for next year, be sure to check our Careers page ocacassionally for listings.

Longtime TurboVote partner Rollins College has spread the word about TurboVote on campus in numerous ways over the years. With increased resources in a presidential election year, they engaged with faculty in a way they previously were unable to.

Marissa Corrente, Associate Director of the Center for Leadership & Community Engagement, sent an email to faculty at the beginning of the fall semester to let them know that her team was available to give 10-15 minute presentations on voting to classes. A few faculty members took her up on her offer.

In hopes of creating more interest, the President of Rollins College sent an email to faculty letting them know that these presentations were available to them. The response was similar; a few more professors were open to presentations on voting in their classes.

Eventually, a faculty member that invited the team to present in class was so impressed that she sent an email encouraging her peers to do the same.

The result? Over 20 faculty members welcomed in-class presentations on voting! This particular faculty member had social capital on campus that was advantageous for convincing her peers that this was a worthwhile use of class time. Working alongside faculty to find ways to discuss civic engagement in the classroom isn’t simple, but a good start is finding an ally that can speak from experience that discussing voting in the classroom can be both positive and productive.

At Democracy Works, we believe voting should fit the way we live. To that end, we build technology for both voters and election administrators that simplifies the process and ensures that no voter should ever have to miss an election.

TurboVote, our first service, helps voters register, stay registered, and cast a ballot in every election, from municipal to national. TurboVote signed up its millionth voter in 2016 by building the largest college and corporate coalition in the country, including 194 campuses, companies like Starbucks, Univision, Facebook, Google, Snapchat, and dozens more. We also helped (basically) everyone find their polling place through the Voting Information Project. Its data had 123 million impressions in 2016, and over 11 million voters looked up where to vote on GetToThePolls.com. To scale our impact and reach every voter, we’re establishing an Election Technology Cooperative to provide affordable, voter-centered technology to election administrators. And Ballot Scout helps election administrators track absentee ballots through the mail, providing transparency in the vote-by-mail process and making it easier to follow up when things go awry.

Streamlining democracy requires quite a bit of knowledge: what form you use to register to vote in Wyoming, to whom you mail your absentee ballot application in Maine, and whether there’s an election taking place in Virginia RIGHT NOW. (There is!) We’re seeking a researcher to help us know as much as possible about elections, and use that knowledge to inform our software design, operations, and customer service for more than 1 million voters across 50 states.

You’ll:

Learn the ins-and-outs of election rules across 50 states, and apply that big-picture understanding to the smallest details of how we serve individual voters

Track when every election is happening, using your wits, charm, and deft Google Alert-wrangling skills (plus the occasional temp staffer)

Solve problems, answer questions, and ensure that even our most confused voter gets the information they need

Break things, hunt bugs, and help prioritize new features for our developer team

You are:

(Almost frighteningly) inquisitive

Exceptionally organized, able to prioritize multiple projects simultaneously, and detail-oriented

Wrangling data or dabbling in Excel formulas/Python/Ruby/R (that left you eager to learn more)

To apply, send a resume and brief, informal introduction to Magda and Katy at work@democracy.works with the subject “Will research for democracy.” From there, we’ll send you a short practical exercise designed to test some of your problem-solving skills, which we’ll anonymize and then evaluate in a blind review. Candidates with strong responses to the practical exercise will go through interview rounds (up to three) with different members of our team who interact closely with this position. We’ll ask for references from our top finalist(s), then make an offer.

Democracy Works is committed to diversity and inclusion in everything we do and aspires to have a team that's representative of the voters we serve. When hiring, we practice proactive outreach to top talent that’s underrepresented in our sector (including Latino, Black, AAPI, and Indigenous candidates). We conduct an anonymized skills evaluation, to reduce implicit bias and resume-dependency in our process. We're a woman- and gay-founded startup, and promote an inclusive culture that stands against racism, sexism, homophobia, and ableism (to name a few). To be explicit, we strongly encourage applicants of all races, ethnicities, political party associations, religions (or lack thereof), national origins, sexual orientations, genders, sexes, ages, abilities, and branches of military service. Feel free to contact work@democracy.works if you have any questions about our commitment to inclusion or about general hiring practices. Democracy Works posts all current career opportunities at democracy.works/careers.

Democracy Works has added veteran election expert Amy Cohen to our Government Services team. As the Director of Government Outreach, Amy will work primarily with election officials and administrators to find ways technology can make their jobs easier, including the adoption of new tools or simply finding different ways to use already existing platforms, such as social media.

Amy joins us with significant experience in the election space. She spent four years with the Pew Charitable Trusts, where she managed the Voting Information Project (VIP), guided national research projects, and forged relationships throughout the corporate and nonprofit sector. Most recently, she co-founded and served as the Director of Operations for the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR), which works to improve the security of elections and increase efficiencies in election administration for both administrators and voters.

As the Government Services team expands its reach, Amy will also help coordinate the Election Technology Cooperative, build and strengthen relationships with state and local election officials, and encourage adoption of online voter registration APIs. We at Democracy Works are thrilled to have Amy as a part of our team and look forward to seeing where her efforts lead to make voting fit the way we live!

Sewanee: The University of the South is a private liberal arts university in Sewanee, TN. With approximately 1,800 students, the Sewanee community is close-knit. As a 2015 Sewanee graduate and Coordinator of Student Programs in the newly formed Office of Civic Engagement, Michelle Howell knows this firsthand.

Howell oversees TurboVote implementation on campus as part of her role. Her effective approach to voter engagement resulted in nearly 500 TurboVote signups in 2016, approaching 30 percent of the Sewanee student body. Sewanee made three appearances on TurboVote leaderboards and voter engagement success at Sewanee was covered by The Sewanee Purple.

Howell created and shared creative social media content. She shared photos and articles related to the election and voting on Facebook and Instagram. Importantly, she posted often in order to reach more students over time. Her posts on the Office of Civic Engagement social media pages featured students completing the voter registration process with pre-addressed, pre-stamped TurboVote envelopes, self-created infographics on voter registration deadlines in each state, and articles with helpful information about voting in different states.

Howell found any reason to talk about voting in a number of campus-wide emails. Instead of sticking with a predictable subject line like, “Important Information About Voting,” she made her voter engagement communications fun and creative. Email content included GIFs, graphics, and specific instructions about how to be a voter, ranging from registration to the vote by mail to get out the vote reminders. Here are some examples of email subject lines:

Enjoy National Coffee Day While Sipping a Brew & Registering to Vote

Running Out of Time: Voter Registration

Do the Hustle: Mail Out Those Ballots

Get Your "I Voted" Sticker & No Longer Have FOMO

Howell worked closely with the Sewanee SGA to get students signed up for TurboVote. Together, they identified the campus cafeteria as a high traffic location ideal for tabling. Students involved with SGA tabled in the cafeteria around from around 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m., the window when most students pass through on a given day. Howell publicly thanked the SGA for their efforts, both in social and traditional media.

The Office of Civic Engagement organized 4 debate watch parties at The Sewanee Inn. These parties, each with a lengthy waiting list, included a plated dinner and 30-minute facilitated discussion after the debate. The Office of Civic Engagement collaborated with the Center for Speaking and Listening, in addition to campus political groups, to host these events. Facilitated discussions were designed to be nonpartisan and encouraged students to be open minded throughout the process. For example, students who identified as Republican were asked to share what they thought Hillary Clinton did well during the debate and vice versa.

Be an accessible resource for students. As quoted by The Sewanee Purple shortly after Election Day: “If individuals didn’t end up getting their absentee ballots in the mail or didn’t end up voting, and they’re still not sure if they’re registered to vote, please stop by and please follow up,” Howell encouraged. “Overall, what we’re trying to get at is a culture of political engagement.” Up next, Sewanee is looking institutionalize voter engagement even further by bringing TurboVote to new student orientation.

The University of Minnesota began partnering with TurboVote in July of 2016. UMN finished the year with over 6,700 TurboVote sign-ups and engaged more than 15 percent of the student body!

Dammann calls himself a “liaison.” The liaising he did with his Minnesota Student Association team, university administration, and the broader campus community resulted in 8 TurboVote leaderboard appearances and being named overall winner of the fall 2016 TurboVote leaderboard for signup numbers.

After establishing a partnership with TurboVote, Dammann and his team decided how they wanted to focus their time and resources. They landed on #EveryVoteCounts for their branding, and also created messaging with the slogan “Vote From Home” to encourage absentee voting for in-state students. Dammann discussed his experiences interacting with legislators and subsequent motivation for encouraging students to vote in their home districts in “Why Students Should Vote,” an op-ed in the Minnesota Daily.

Dammann identified three key administrative audiences that made sense to bring together to discuss voter engagement: the president’s office, government relations, and student affairs. These offices were able to provide various support, from funding to spreading the word about events to sharing the UMN TurboVote link with their audiences. Collaboration allowed for one centralized campaign across the university.

Consider how you can provide multiple touchpoints for voter engagement. Dammann’s advice to others doing this work is to “get it in front of students’ eyes as much as possible.” That he did. UMN executed two TurboVote IT integrations: links to TurboVote were placed on the front page of MyU, the University of Minnesota’s enterprise portal, and UMN’s Moodle course management system. At least eight emails including a link to TurboVote were sent to the student body from various senders including the student body president and dean of students. The Minnesota Student Association organized Voterpalooza, a day-long civic engagement festival in September featuring elected officials and candidates, hosts of a popular podcast on politics, free pizza, and voter registration. These events and communications, coupled with regular promotion of TurboVote via social media, made it increasingly likely that a student would come across TurboVote.

Minnesota has online voter registration, no-excuse absentee voting, and same-day voter registration. This allowed the UMN team to vary their messaging throughout the election season to continuously reach voters, even on Election Day. Understand the environment for voting in your state, and use it to your advantage. It’s critical to plan your outreach and communications with the relevant laws and deadlines in mind.

In 2016, the Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement at Washington University in St. Louis quadrupled its voter registrations compared to their tally in 2012. WashU engaged 30 percent of their student body on TurboVote last year and made 17 appearances on TurboVote leaderboards. The private research university in St. Louis, Missouri has hosted more presidential debates than any other institution in the country. While debates provide incredible learning and participation opportunities for students and the community and excellent exposure for the university, WashU takes political and civic engagement seriously all year.

This year, WashU established a joint campus initiative called WashU Votes. The committee brought together stakeholders with an interest in civic engagement on campus, including representatives from the Gephardt Institute, the student union, the graduate professional council, the public affairs department, and campus life.

The Gephardt Institute had a key role in organizing the four WashU Votes teams. These teams included programming, student funding, marketing and communications, and voter engagement.

Specifically, the voter engagement team was comprised of over 80 faculty, staff, graduate students, and undergraduate students. The Gephardt Institute provided support and oversight, primarily through its Voter Engagement Fellow. In the spring of 2016, the Gephardt Institute hired a graduating senior for this short-term position. The fellow worked part-time during the spring semester and then full-time from May to December. Some of the fellow’s many responsibilities included coordinating with offices across campus, researching best practices in voter engagement, creating voter engagement content, communicating with media, and serving as the point person for all voting-related inquiries.

The Voter Engagement Team had three subcommittees: the Brain Trust provided input into major initiatives such as Constitution Day and National Voter Registration Day, Community Champions were charged with promoting voter engagement in communities across campus, and the Voter Registration Squad served as the boots on the ground at numerous voter registration drives.

The dedicated students and staff on the Voter Engagement Squad participated in voter registration trainings that included an overview of TurboVote. In total, they tabled at over 25 events. Some of their more successful experiences included setting up in front of the student center on Constitution Day, National Voter Registration Day, during the Community Service Fair, and at the Sophomore Resource Fair. They found less success tabling at events with speakers and talks related to politics, as audience members tended to have up-to-date voter registrations.

The large coalition of groups and offices involved with WashU Votes were able to leverage relationships to support their expansive efforts. For example, ten tablets with signature-capturing capabilities were loaned to WashU Votes by Dell. This was critical to support WashU’s tabling across campus.

WashU organized a number of events to engage students including post-debate civic dialogues, an absentee party to be inclusive of students voting by mail, an election results watch party, and a collaborative initiative called “November 9th and Beyond,” to encourage continuous political dialogue.

The Gephardt Institute takes a “Politics 365” approach which includes engaging students in local elections and offering educational programming focused on learning about key political issues and skills needed to engage in the democratic process. “What’s at Stake in the St. Louis City Election,” was a panel discussion of community leaders on economic opportunity, public and neighborhood safety, and public education. They’ve also organized a “Skills for Democracy” series to provide students with practical tools for being engaged and are collaborating with other stakeholders on an academic symposium on American democracy. Because voter registration is not a one-time experience, WashU is working to identify which online bottleneck will make the best permanent home for their TurboVote site.

At Democracy Works, we believe voting should fit the way we live. To that end, we build technology for both voters and election administrators that simplifies the process and ensures that no voter should ever have to miss an election.

The Voting Information Project (VIP) coordinates with state election offices to publish nationally-standardized information about where and how to vote—data that powers everything from Google’s polling place search to our own text message and email reminders to TurboVote users. The Data Associate will be a part of the VIP team, assisting with collecting, parsing, and assessing a nation’s worth of election data.

(Our other projects include TurboVote, which tracks a voter’s elections. We provide all the materials and information they need to get registered, stay registered, and cast a ballot in every election, from municipal to national—and we’ll even mail forms with an addressed, stamped envelope for the local election office. Ballot Scout helps local election administrators track absentee ballots as they travel through the mail, providing transparency in the vote-by-mail process and making it easier to follow up when things go awry.)

As the data associate for VIP, you’ll:

Contribute to a dataset that has served millions (and hundreds of millions) of voters since 2008

Salary is competitive and commensurate with education and experience. Democracy Works also offers a benefits package including health insurance, vacation, and a 403(b) retirement plan. We’re based in Brooklyn, N.Y. with remote employees across the United States, and we hope you’ll want to work from our Brooklyn office, though we’ll consider remote arrangements for the right candidate.

To apply, send a resume and brief, informal introduction to Franklin and Maria at work@democracy.works with the subject “Will data for democracy.”

Democracy Works is committed to diversity and inclusion in everything we do and aspires to have a team which is representative of the voters we serve. When hiring, we practice proactive outreach to top talent that’s underrepresented in our sector (including Latinx, Black, AAPI, and Indigenous candidates), and we offer every candidate an anonymized skills evaluation, to reduce implicit bias and resume-dependency in our process. We're a woman- and gay-founded startup, and promote an inclusive culture that stands against racism, sexism, homophobia, and ableism (to name a few). To be explicit, we strongly encourage applicants of all races, ethnicities, political party associations, religions (or lack thereof), national origins, sexual orientations, genders, sexes, ages, abilities, and branches of military service. Feel free to contact work@democracy.works if you have any questions about our commitment to inclusion or about general hiring practices. Democracy Works posts all current career opportunities at democracy.works/careers.

The mad rush of gearing up for the 2016 presidential election is in our rear view, yet somehow it doesn’t seem any less busy! For starters, there are a number of important elections happening in 2017; Virginians and New Jerseyans will have the opportunity to elect a governor, there are a slew of special elections in North Carolina and elsewhere, and voters across the country are making their voices heard about public education in their communities.

In my conversations with TurboVote implementers across more than 40 states, and while meeting civic engagement and student life professionals at the IMPACT Conference, the Eastern Region Campus Compact Conference, and the Gulf South Summit on Service Learning and Civic-Engagement through Higher Education, one theme is pervasive: How do we keep up the momentum and further engage student voters with the democratic process?

Of course, this is when I love to tell the Harvard story. In the fall of 2016, Harvard University placed TurboVote within their mandatory online check-in process completed by all undergraduate students before the start of classes. During this process, which is powered by Oracle PeopleSoft Campus Solutions, students click through a number of screens to complete such tasks as updating their emergency contact information. One of these screens presented students with the option of signing up for TurboVote. All undergraduates were given the opportunity to take steps to register to vote, request an absentee ballot, and sign up for text/email notifications about upcoming elections. Nearly 1,400 students, about one-fourth of Harvard undergraduates, chose to do so.

Ensuring all students have the opportunity to get connected with the information and materials they need to be lifelong voters is a lofty goal. It’s also an attainable reality when collaborators across campus come together to prioritize the civic duty of voting, like Harvard did. One way to spend your time this spring is to begin to identify online and in-person processes that all students or a bloc (i.e. first-year) of students pass through and explore how voter registration might be thrown in the mix. We learned through our research on integrating voter registration into campus web infrastructure that starting the conversation early with the registrar’s office, campus IT professionals, and faculty is the key to pulling off a TurboVote integration like Harvard.

I’ve also been encouraged to learn about substantive programming and ongoing voter engagement initiatives on a number of campuses. In February, DePauw University organized a nonpartisan Civic Action Day. Organizers set up tables in the student union during the university’s dedicated lunch hour. Handouts on the views of elected officials were distributed and laptops were available to look up legislative office phone numbers, as well as additional information. There were also prepaid postcards ready to be written on and sent. Students were encouraged to call and write their representatives during this drop-in event and staff were available to guide them through the process and answer questions. The men’s swim team coach also stopped by. He happens to be a city council member and was able to offer a perspective on the importance of staying involved locally.

Local elections in the spring also provide a great opportunity to keep voter engagement salient. In Normal, IL, Illinois State University is gearing up for a mayoral and town council race on April 4. On-campus implementers worked to ensure their TurboVote link returned to a prominent location within their student portal during a dedicated three-week period. They are also messaging around important differences between the presidential election and this local election, namely revised early voting locations, so students know where to vote.

In Missouri, Washington University in St. Louis organized a series of events early in the spring semester as part of their Politics 365 initiative. On April 4, a new mayor will be elected for the first time in 16 years and school board members will be elected, too. The Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement sponsored a bus for students to travel for free to a mayoral candidate forum. The Gephardt Institute also organized, “What’s at Stake in the St. Louis City Election,” a panel discussion and reception on economic opportunity, public and neighborhood safety, and public education in St. Louis. WashU advertises these events, in addition to registration deadlines and election dates, on an easily distributable one-pager.

Are you doing something exciting to keep students democratically engaged in 2017? Let us know by emailing partnerships@turbovote.org and we would love to profile your efforts!

Hi there! I’m Magda, the product director of TurboVote, and I wanted to share some exciting TurboVote technology news with you.

The TurboVote team started the year strong with a series of in-person usability studies in Philadelphia, New York, and San Rafael. Usability testing is employed in user-centric design to see how one might interact with a website. In general, participants described the TurboVote website as “straightforward,” “concise,” and “simple.” We also learned that users don’t mind receiving election information by email or text, even if the messages are frequent. Shoutout to St. Joseph’s College - Brooklyn, Dominican University of California, and People’s Emergency Center for helping us make this happen!

We are committed to serving all elections from local to national levels, which means thousands of voters will be equipped with the information they need to participate in our democratic process. That is why we’re always trying to make TurboVote better. Here’s what we launched in the first quarter of 2017:

What’s new?

A new dashboard! Now, you can celebrate your voter engagement success with a snapshot of real-time data every time you log in to your Admin Console. We know how valuable this dashboard is to our partners, which is why it’s a top priority.

Our dedicated engineering team is also working to make our technology faster, and easier to maintain and scale. Their work will not always be visible to you, but it will make our platform better, smoother, and more reliable for years to come.

What’s improved?

We’ve improved export efficiency. In the past, you might see your export loading…and...it...would...take...a while to load. That was annoying, so we fixed it. To help you interpret the data, we also added the Partner Export Key for download within the export tab of the Admin Console.

We cleaned up how TurboVote displays deadlines for voters who have multiple upcoming elections. We know our old handling was confusing for some voters in California specifically.

So, what’s next?Among other exciting things, the TurboVote team is committed to building the campus address lookup tool, which will allow our implementers in higher education to create, update, and delete on-campus housing options from within the Admin Console. That way, when students wish to register to vote using an on-campus address, they will be able to select their housing option from a dropdown menu and input the address you saved within the Console, leading to less mistakes and smoother processing at the clerk’s office!

Have feedback or want to see your suggestion on this list? Send us a note to info@turbovote.org.

A few weeks ago, a new civic nonprofit asked me if I’d come talk about problem-solving through technology. So one early Tuesday morning, I found myself in drizzly Chicago, talking about the importance of invitation and the challenge of welcoming would-be voters into American democracy.

I’m sure many of you have seen variations on this chart: this is how American adults voted. It's not even close: the plurality of eligible voters just... didn't.

It's true, this election brought out more alienation and disapproval than usual. And we might see that more people opted out for those reasons. But after every federal election, the Census bureau polls non-voters, and the answers from previous cycles are remarkably consistent: some people don't care, and others hate the system, but a majority say they meant to vote, but got caught up in work, or missed a registration deadline, or had transportation problems. In short, the process didn't work for them.

I probably don't need to tell you this, but presidential elections are the high point for participation. In midterm elections, state elections, and local elections, turnout drops even lower. As a result, when we talk about democracy in America, we’re talking about only part of America. And we know democracy works better when more people participate. The problems we see in our government stem from the fact that we aren’t all getting represented.

How do we get more people involved? Through TurboVote, Democracy Works helps voters navigate the process of tracking elections, staying registered, and casting their ballots. We reach voters mostly through colleges, universities, and non-profit organizations, building on their relationships with members and students.

In 2015, I conducted a series of user interviews to learn how people approach registering to vote. My questions were all about that process — were you online? On paper? At the DMV? And yet my notes surprised me — the answers were all about people. “My dad sat me down on my 18th birthday.” “My high school guidance counselor passed out forms.” “I saw a canvasser on campus, and he looked sad, so I went over to register and cheer him up.” (True story).

The more I listened, the more I realized that the act of invitation mattered a great deal to these voters, and that elections can feel exclusive and unfamiliar to first-time voters.

So last year, Democracy Works brought together a coalition of major corporations and non-profits around a goal of restoring participation to new highs, with a 2016 focus on trying to reach more people through as many different channels as possible, and inviting them into our democracy.

We tried a lot of different things:

AppNexus put voter-registration reminders across its entire network. Want to Skype? Get invited to vote.

BuzzFeed ran a PSA with President Obama. Looking for a short Internet distraction? Get invited to vote.

Facebook posted news feed reminders and push notifications about voter registration, and information about early voting, and what’s on the ballot, and Election Day reminders, AND brought peer pressure to bear. Want to know what your friends are up to? Get invited to vote – and see which of them have told Facebook they're voters, too.

Snapchat went big, too. You think you've escaped the news, but then there's The Rock, telling you to vote. Or Jared Leto. Apparently people are intimidated when Jared Leto asks them to do things.

Just need your morning coffee? Starbucks is going to... invite you to vote.

But most people's strongest relationships aren't with #BRANDS (sorry, brands!). TurboVote started out on campus at colleges and universities, and their ability to connect with their students and form good civic habits are still unrivaled. So what happens if companies also think about how to connect with their employees?

Or, what about when a media company like Univision not only invites its readers and viewers in, but provides continuous, deep-dive content not just on the political horse race, but the full election process? And plasters this coverage with a constant, recurring invitation to join in and vote?

What happens when Chance the Rapper not only invites his listeners to vote, but actually throws them a concert before going to cast his vote?

"We're gonna have a very peaceful, but very lit parade"

Inviting people, it turns out, is a start. Offering a sincere welcome, one that’s rich and personal, clearly resonates more deeply yet.

Seeking out that missing electorate and inviting them in can work, but it's only the start. From there, we still have to make sure people have the information to follow through. We have to find their motivation, keep it burning. We can't just thank them and walk away them after they register, or even after Election Day.

That commitment to participation, year in and year out, is why Democracy Works is now tracking thousands of special, state, and local 2017 elections and sending out notifications about them to our million-plus TurboVote users, and are opening up our datasets of election dates, election administrators, and much much more, to build from a quadrennial party to a perpetual neighborhood affair, and to make sure that everyone receives a personalized, custom request to come in and take part.

(If you’d like to talk about ways to incorporate an invitation to voting into your community, company, or application, don’t hesitate to contact us!)

Last week, Emily and I traveled to St. Louis to enjoy 70 degree weather and the IMPACT Conference at Washington University in St. Louis. IMPACT provides us with an exciting opportunity to connect with students and staff from colleges and universities from around the country at this annual convening on civic engagement. As the home for TurboVote at WashU, Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement staff and students secured 17 TurboVote leaderboard appearances, so we were also excited to be able to congratulate them for their great work in person and enjoy their session about Politics 365.

At our Saturday morning session, No such thing as an "off-year:" Ensuring students are ready to vote in all elections, we dug deep into the (unfortunate) drop in turnout during local elections and discussed strategies for keeping students engaged. We’re so grateful we were able to hear campus perspectives from Isabella Braga and Frances Ashbury of the Rollins College Democracy Project and Cara Johnson of the Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement at WashU. Naturally, we played our favorite game, Votes & Ballots. Session attendees worked together as part of either the Big State University Bears or the Pawnee Community College Owls to make a voter engagement plan that worked for their campus and community (with limited time and resources, of course).

It was great to visit with members of the TurboVote community. A shout out to folks from DePauw University, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, St. Joseph’s College-New York, and Case Western Reserve University, for saying hello and chatting about voting with us. We connected with some wonderful future partners, too. I’m glad to report that our TurboVote chip clips and buttons were a hit.

The IMPACT conference offered enriching content around every corner! We enjoyed hearing keynote remarks from former U.S. congressman Richard Gephardt, Sam Giacobozzi, and Asam Ahmad and attended a panel discussion on getting engaged post-2016 election. St. Louis offered us many food options, and we were happy to experience Blueberry Hill, Pi Pizzeria, and Retreat Gastropub. Did I mention we saw the world’s biggest chess piece, too?

I’m happy to report it was a great weekend filled with many members from the TurboVote family and a fantastic time was had by all. We look forward to seeing fellow IMPACT’ers in Dayton, Ohio in 2018!

At Democracy Works, we believe voting should fit the way we live. To that end, we build technology for both voters and election administrators that simplifies the process and ensures that no voter should ever have to miss an election.

TurboVote, our first service, helps voters register, stay registered, and cast a ballot in every election, from municipal to national. TurboVote signed up its millionth voter in 2016 by building the largest college and corporate coalition in the country, including 194 campuses, companies like Starbucks, Univision, Facebook, Google, Snapchat, and dozens more. We also helped (basically) everyone find their polling place through the Voting Information Project. Its data had 123 million impressions in 2016, and over 11 million voters looked up where to vote on GetToThePolls.com. To scale our impact and reach every voter, we’re establishing an Election Technology Cooperative to provide affordable, voter-centered technology to election administrators. And Ballot Scout helps election administrators track absentee ballots through the mail, providing transparency in the vote-by-mail process and making it easier to follow up when things go awry.

These products are the work of our 8-person developer team. Most of our development involves writing microservices in Clojure running in Docker containers and communicating over RabbitMQ, web clients in ClojureScript, and data stored in Datomic. We also have projects that use JavaScript, Node, jQuery, React, Ruby, Rails, Python, Golang, and PostgreSQL. We hope you have experience with some of these technologies and are excited to get experience with the rest.

As a software engineer, you’ll:

Pair program

Collaborate with product managers

Make sure your work delivers value to users

Rotate roles and projects on our team so that you get a variety of experience and working relationships, making sure you can bring your unique strengths to as wide a swath of our work as possible

You are:

An experienced software developer (some Clojure experience is a plus, but it's not a deal-breaker if you don't have any) who is excited to dive into these projects

Passionate about our mission and strategy

Collaborative, both within the dev team and across the organization

Organized and detail-oriented

Rigorous

Enthusiastic about mentoring and learning from others of various experience levels

To apply, send a resume and brief introduction to Wes and Quinn at work@democracy.works with the subject “Will code for democracy.”

Democracy Works is committed to diversity and inclusion in everything we do and aspires to have a team which is representative of the voters we serve. When hiring, we practice proactive outreach to top talent that’s underrepresented in our sector (including Latinx, Black, AAPI, and Indigenous candidates), and we offer every candidate an anonymized skills evaluation, to reduce implicit bias and resume-dependency in our process. We're a woman- and gay-founded startup, and promote an inclusive culture that stands against racism, sexism, homophobia, and ableism (to name a few). To be explicit, we strongly encourage applicants of all races, ethnicities, political party associations, religions (or lack thereof), national origins, sexual orientations, genders, sexes, ages, abilities, and branches of military service. Feel free to contact work@democracy.works if you have any questions about our commitment to inclusion or about general hiring practices.